Contemporary Authors We Think We’ll Still Be Reading in 100 Years

Earlier this week, we read a fascinating article over at The New Yorker that asked the question, “why is literary fame so unpredictable?” Apparently, in 1929, the readers of The Manchester Guardian were asked to vote on the authors they thought would still be read widely in 2029, and their top choice was John Galsworthy, who — though he won the Nobel Prize for The Forsyte Saga in 1932 — is now relatively unknown, or at least not very popular. The article goes on to discuss the difficulty in making predictions of literary prestige over long periods of time, noting a couple things that might give clues (a staunch but small readership of fellow authors, for one). While we concur that this kind of thing often rests on chance, fashion and unforeseeable future circumstance, we thought we’d take a stab at rounding up a few of the contemporary (read: living) authors we think we might still be reading in 100 years. Click through to see our predictions, and let us know your own in the comments.

Gabriel García Márquez

In addition to having written several beautiful novels (and, you know, having been awarded the Nobel Prize), Márquez is the figurehead of magical realism, a literary style that he popularized with the success of One Hundred Years of Solitude. So if nothing else, the author will at least be forever remembered and studied in conjunction with that stylistic trend, and his popularity will likely shift along with it.